Monday, 16 September 2013

What can a man's eyes see in a week! (Malawi, Zambia & Botswana).

Many
friends were there to open their arms and say good bye. People that I have been
with for a couple of weeks, days or hours. Sometimes this can be really
difficult, but I am kind of used to it…

We left Nkhata Bay
in the afternoon. With Jacque and Neta we are sharing the taxi only up to
Mzuzu, with Tony, the English guy with whom I feel like sharing the bond of
friendship, we will travel together all the way to Botswana, through Zambia.
After that, he plans to move on to Namibia, and myself…no plans at
all.

Getting a
ticket and a seat on the daily bus to the country’s capital was surprisingly
easy. It had nothing to do with my previous experience in the neighboring
country (Tanzania).

The bus
ride was relatively comfortable and lasted less(!) than we expected it to last.
Roughly six hours. We arrived in Lilongwe a bit
earlier than midnight and got informed that the next bus to Lusaka,
the capital of Zambia,
would not leave before 6.30 next morning. Thankfully, the bus was there with
the door open. This is where we spent the night. Oh, it was so cold, even with
the sleeping bag. I miss so much the jumper that they stole from me back in Malawi…
(I never made it to replace it with a new one as the market in Nkhata Bay
does not trade new clothes, and furthermore “the winter's finished, so no more
winter clothes for sale, bro…”)!

I slept all the way to the borders with Zambia, where I
had a short adventure with the immigration officers, who discovered that my
visa had expired 2 weeks ago. They told me to go and collect my language from
the bus because they intended to bring me in front of a “judge”, in the back
office. I brought my stuff, they were waiting me outside, tried to scare me,
asked for 100$, they finally took 30, and I crossed the borders with my
passport stamped properly.

The way from the border to Lusaka (Zambia).

I was still sleepy and confused at that time, and I
completely forgot to change some 50$ I had in Malawian currency. I brought them
back to Greece, but no
worries, I have so many people who plan to travel to Malawi, promptly :)

When we got back on the bus, I realized there
were only a handful of passengers travelling with us, which felt like a magical
image, for the typical standards of transportations in Africa.
That incredible comfort lasted only for a while as the buss got absolutely full
in the next border city, by a big group of volunteers of a Dutch Organization
which was operating in a nearby village. They were travelling to Lusaka, to fly out. The
trip was long, longer than twelve hours, and the landscape was not any more
green and diverse. Zambia
is an endless plain of dry steppe.

We arrived in Lusaka
at 18.30 in the evening and booked the next bus to Livingstone, less than one
hour later. Plenty of time to quench my thirst and hunger, and stretch my body
a bit as we had some eight more hours on the road.

In Livingstone we arrived at about 3.30 in the
morning. The streets were dark and seemed deserted and the temperature was very
low. We asked the driver to stay in the bus until morning and he pointed out
another bus nearby, we could spend the rest of the night there, this bus would
leave right away. We walked less than 50 minutes and that was enough to freeze.
Those two or three hours in that bus were like a torture. I was freezing and almost
every single part of my body was in pain.

We only spent two nights in Livingstone, and that was long
enough for our bodies to recover for the long and exhausting trip but also for
our eyes to see one of contemporary world’s biggest miracles, the Falls.

Smart tips
for backpackers and independent travellers:

A chameleon residing right next of my tent.

Both JolyBoys Backpackers & Livingstone
Backpackers offer relatively cheap accommodation options, with the prices for
the campsite (with your own tent) to be at the time 8USD for the first one and
6USD for the second. Both are organizing any kind of safaris, activities and
excursions, with the first one to be more experienced and expensive.

Food in
lodges or in restaurants is about 5 to 7 bugs for a meal, but lodges provide
self catering options and fully equipped kitchens for that purpose, while the
two central super markets of the city have nothing to envy from the western
ones, but have nothing to do with them pricewise (they are significantly
cheaper, apparently).